Celebrity Biographies
Juan Antonio Bayona
He surprised even strangers with his debut, The Orphanage , and since then he has headed with the speed of a bullet towards international consecration. He has not finished his second film, but it can already be said that Juan Antonio Bayona is one of the great Spanish directors of the 21st century.
Born in 1975 in Barcelona, Juan Antonio Bayona has been passionate about fantastic cinema since he was a child. In fact, from very early on he became a regular at the Sitges Film Festival. There he met the Mexican Guillermo del Toro , who was still quite unknown, when he participated in the contest with his film Cronos . The two hit it off, and Del Toro promised him that he would help him in the future, if necessary. Determined to make his way in the world, he studied at the Superior School of Cinema and Audiovisuals of Catalonia.
At first, Bayona dedicated himself to television commercials, and he was also in charge of some video clips for groups such as OBK, Fangoria and Camela. Little by little, she managed to carry out her first short films, My Holidays and The Sponge Man . One fine day she met Sergio G. Sánchez , a screenwriter who had an interesting project on his hands, The Orphanage , a horror film about a mother determined to find her missing son. Bayona immediately saw the possibilities that were opening up before him, and decided to play the card of his old friend Del Toro. He loved the script and offered himself as a producer.
Few such brilliant debuts are remembered in Spanish cinema. Certainly, Bayona did not hesitate to resort to images indebted to other films, such as Poltergeist , but the film worked perfectly and had an inspired performance by Belén Rueda . Applauded during its screening at the Cannes Film Festival, it became the most watched film in Spain in 2007 and won 7 Goyas, including one for Bayona himself, as a new director.
Since then, the young Barcelona director has been raffled off. He was about to direct Eclipse , the third installment of the vampire saga started by Twilight , but he preferred to opt for other projects, and signed a contract with Universal to take “Hater”, a novel by David Moody starring Ben Gazzara , and which will once again be produced by Guillermo del Toro.
But first, Bayona has started filming The Impossible , which reconstructs the tsunami tragedy that devastated Southeast Asia in 2004. The British Naomi Watts stars in this film that the director has chosen to shoot in the City of Light, Alicante. “It’s more than just a disaster movie from page 3 of the script,” says the actress.